Buna Buyoka

Buna Buyoka is a tiny mountain village. Maybe 200 people live there. For the majority of the earth’s population, you’d never know that they existed. In fact, I wonder how they were discovered. They live at the very top of this mountain, about an hours hike straight up from the road (and yes, it was a hike). One of our NGO partners, CFA, have a motto that they “touch the untouchable and reach the unreachable”. I like that, because this village they found certainly fits the description. Several weeks ago members of our team hiked up there with CFA to do some evaluation. The overall consensus was that Buna Buyoka needed a school. CFA gathered a few volunteer teachers together months ago, and now they meet in basically their only building-a church, or maybe outside if the church is occupied. The elders of the village said that they realized it was too late for them, but not for their children, and education was the most important thing to them.

So the team called in “the teachers.” Sarah and I have lost our identity while we’re here, and now we are affectionately called “the teachers” because we are always together. Last week on Tuesday we traveled up there with the project lead for the school, Devin and a couple members of CFA. The plan was for them to work on the building of the school while Sarah and I met with the teachers.

On the hike up, Devin kept saying, “We’re almost there” “we’re almost there,’ and I was thinking, “where is this place?” But we finally made it. I knew when we had reached it because suddenly there were like 50 kids coming down the mountain singing a song over and over again about “welcome visitors”. They were darling. They sat us in front of their church and the children sang songs for a while. Not too much longer they ushered us in to have breakfast, which consisted of roasted maize (corn) and tea (which is really water, milk and sugar). After that Sarah and I met with the teachers for a couple of hours. We asked them about their greatest challenges, and learned that their highest schooling was S4, about the equivalent of a high school diploma. They have had no training in education or teaching, and their English wasn’t as good as the other teachers Sarah and I have worked with. (Luckily, one of the CFA members stayed nearby in case we needed help with translation.) Sarah and I visited with them about basic lesson planning and management, professionalism of teaching and other things. In what felt like an hour later, we were told it was time for lunch. They fed us heaping amounts of rice, beans, posho, and other traditional food. Then we went to finish meeting with the teachers. I really don’t feel like we did much good, I hardly knew where to begin. At the end of our session though, Sarah and I asked them to write down some of the goals they will work on for teaching, and many of the things they mentioned were things we had discussed, so hopefully something sunk in. We are also hoping to invite them to our final teacher seminar this Wednesday.

After all the teacher talk, we got to just play with the kids and Sarah taught them a dance. We had a great time. Before we left, Devin told me that this small village had been praying for years for white people to come and help them. I don’t know how much help we really are, but I’m certain God hears the prayers of those good people. He also hears my prayers, because while we were on the mountain top it was pouring rain. The rain beat against the tin roof of the church so hard we couldn’t hear each other at all. So by the time we were ready to go, the ground had turned to slushy mud, and I was ready to mudslide down the mountain. I took two steps and had to hold a tree branch to keep from falling, it was so slick! One of the older men of the village (called “chef” because he makes a lot of the food) grabbed my hand. He literally pulled me down that mountain, and stayed with us the whole way. I had taken off my shoes because my feet had better traction in the mud, and when we stopped at a small spigot, he washed my feet and legs and the hem of my skirt. I was so touched by this man, and by this whole village.

Devin and I agreed that they are some of the closest people to God. Both in physical and spiritual proximity.

Some boys from the villageTeacher Talk
Joseph and Mary
Building the school

How can you resist them?
The village

Teachers Strike

Today Sarah and I had an appointment to go and video tape our favorite teacher-Apollo. He had attended the science teacher seminars, and had asked us to come and watch him. We were so impressed when we did, that we wanted to record him and play portions of his lesson in the next seminar. When we showed up to Bujuloto Primary School, everything seemed normal at first. We were ushered into the headmasters office to sign the visitor's book and spoke with her for a few minutes. But then she explained to us that the teachers were on strike.

Last week the President of Uganda, Museveni, announced that there were not enough funds to raise teachers salaries. The speech, I believe, was broadcast on the local radio station last night, and today, nearly all teachers have gone on strike-everywhere. Apollo was the only teacher at the school. Beyond him was the headmaster and 2 deputy head teachers, but they were the only ones there. "What are all the students doing?" I asked. Gertrude, the headmaster told me that the students were still working at their desks without a teacher. This is crazy, I thought. We left her office and waited for Apollo to be ready to teach his lesson. I walked past a P1 class that looked like it was getting rather unruly. I stepped inside to find the over 100 students copying numbers from the board. There were 2 older girls with sticks who were walking around and whacking them if they got too much off-task. Despite not having a real teacher, they still stood and greeted me in their usual choral response. I walked around for a couple of minutes praising the students on their writing and they calmed down considerably. Then Apollo taught the lesson he had so carefully prepared, pulling in students from other grade levels to fill the room because many pupils weren't there. After the lesson the headteacher excused all the students from the school.

On our way back home, we found a crowd of students outside the municipality's office demanding their teachers back. I don't know how long the strike will last, but this is crazy.

ps, I found out how much teacher salaries are. They are paid about 200,000 UGX. aka, $76/month. And I thought I was paid poorly.

Here's a link to read about it:
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1208418/-/bl1svaz/-/


Sarah and I with Apollo's class

One of our favorite teachers, Jessica.

Project Update:

This week we taught the last of the practical science teaching seminars! There were hiccups here and there, but overall it went really well. With all the seminars combined, there were over 200 teachers trained in the scientific method, (they’ve never heard of it) higher-order thinking skills, inquiry teaching, assessment, active participation, and other things. We also showed (in small groups) 15 science demonstrations or experiments that use materials that cost either nothing or very little. The demonstrations all came from the Ugandan curriculum so the teachers can actually use them.

The response from the teachers was very positive. On the first day of the seminar, we took surveys to see what people thought or what they would change. In the “other comments or suggestions” section, over 70% of the teachers said they would suggest future seminars, or just longer seminars so there is more training time. We have also heard of several teachers who have already started to share the information with their colleagues (YES!). Right now we are trying to organize one more seminar that will be for the head teachers. This one will focus on student-centered learning and inquiry, and how the head teachers can sustain the information we have already given the other teachers.

Through the seminars, we have become good friends with Mike, the District Education Officer. He has been extremely helpful, and he is so supportive of what we’ve done. He even introduced us to his boss, the Chief Administrative Officer- over all of education in Mbale. He also seemed impressed with what we’ve done, and they agreed that we could go to the Teacher Education College this week! That way we can get an idea of how the teachers are trained, and start at the root of the problem.

The seminar

Jordan teaching condensation

If Only Missionary Work Was This Easy...

Also last week Sarah and I went to recruit for our English classes. We’ve had a steady number of 10-20 usually, but some days there are more attendees than others. So we went down to a supermarket and bought something similar to poster board, and made signs about the class. We knew of another popular supermarket (called BAM) so we were going to stand outside there and tell people to come to English class. Well, unfortunately, we never made it to BAM. All we did was hold up the signs as we walked, and we were stopped every few feet. It was crazy. Everyone sounded interested, even if they didn’t actually make the effort to come to class. In fact, we had people sign their name on a sheet of paper if they were going to come, and in less than 2 hours, about 70 people signed up. Really, only ten of them came to the next class, but I was still impressed. One man in particular, Anthony, started recruiting for us. “Come here,” he said, “these people who live here don’t know English.” He showed us this slum area where sure enough, English was fairly limited. He translated for us, and was the one who brought the ten people with him to class. “Next time I will bring 20!” he said. I guess we’ll see how it goes tomorrow!

The Solution: The Gospel

Later that Sunday I went with the senior couple, Elder and Sister Rix, to visit an investigator named Jonathon. I also went with a member of our team, McKay, because he is helping to give this man piano lessons. I just needed to be there as another HELP team member, but I really enjoyed sitting in. The man lived in a very small one-room home, whose bed was partitioned off by a sheet. He and his wife and two children were very kind, and the fact that mzungus were in the neighborhood was somewhat of a novelty. We could tell because several of the neighborhood kids came in and just sat down as quietly as could be to watch what would happen with us. The lesson went well, and afterwards I even gave Jonathon a brief English lesson because he said he wanted to improve his English. We weren’t even teaching a gospel lesson, but something about being with the senior couple, and talking periodically about gospel-related things, brought with it a wealth of good feelings, as I acknowledged the blessings that the gospel has given me. I thought about all the good things and projects that our HELP team is accomplishing right now. 920 hours are given each week by the team to help empower the people of Mbale and eradicate poverty. But all of that just paled in comparison to the rich blessings and perspective that only the gospel can bring. I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Preach My Gospel: “Only the Gospel can save the world from the calamity of its own self-destruction.” No amount of NGOs in an area can erase poverty. No amount of funds could help to feed the world for a lifetime, and no amount of time would be enough to remove the pain and sickness and “calamity” of the world. However, the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the fullness of His gospel and Priesthood power, could do more to bring happiness and peace to our troubled world than all our earthly powers combined.

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t feel that my time here is wasted and I believe the Lord allows us to be His hands for a time. But, as much as I try to give to the people of Uganda, it will never be as healing as the gospel, or as joyous as the “good news” of Jesus Christ.

Will I Get To Eat Today?

As volunteers, I think you can adjust to your new conditions and cultural differences after a while. But from time to time, in rare moments, I find myself struck by the adverse conditions that so much of the world’s population is exposed to. On the afternoon of the soccer camp, I had one of those moments.

I was helping to serve lunch, which consisted of rice and g-nut sauce, until the sauce ran out and then it was just rice. We tried to proportion out the servings just right so that everyone could get some. As we were getting close to the bottom of the container, somehow all the boys knew, and what was once an organized line, became a mass of bowls, cups, containers, or anything else that they boys bring to eat on and could shove at us. They were all trying to get to the food before it ran out, and it was impossible to keep track of who had already eaten and who hadn’t had any yet. But we did our best, and when things went absolutely out of control, we put the pan on the ground and shewed all the boys away telling them there was no more (there was just a little, but things had turned to chaos). I think for some of those boys, they didn’t know where their next meal would come from. I noticed one boy in particular who sort of hung around and sat on the side, with his plate that had been licked clean from food. He was one of the last in line, but we assumed he had come for seconds because his plate was dirty. After he was there for so long, I decided to go talk to him. I introduced myself and he told me his name was Hammin. I asked him if the food had been good. He told me, “I didn’t get any. I was in line, but had to leave so that I could find someone to borrow a plate from. By the time I got back, the food was gone.” I was reminded of Impact school, where the orphan students are fed lunch, and those at the end of the line never get to eat because the food runs out. I told Hammin to hand me his dirty plate, and I filled it with some of the leftover rice. When I brought it back, he was so grateful, and thanked me for it again later in the day. I was so touched by this quiet boy. “How many meals does he get to eat?” I wonder. “How many times does he miss out because he is at the end of some line?” I walked hurriedly away so that he wouldn’t see my tears. I have never had to worry about when I will eat again. I have never been anxious to eat a small portion of only rice. I have never had to fight to the front of a line in order to be fed. And I’m certain I will try to never take that for granted again.

Thanks, Hammin, for teaching me a special lesson that day.

Soccer Camp

Africans love “futball.” There’s not doubt about it. Even I know the chant for the Ugandan Cranes. A bit of the love of soccer was evident last Sunday when we went with another member of the team to teach leadership classes to a group of youth involved in soccer camp. It was a blast, and Andy and I taught the class about “synergy”. (The classes were based on Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”). It was a great lesson with the older kids, but there was a bit of a language barrier with the smaller ones.

My favorite part of the day was when some of the boys got to scrimmage with the Mzungus (us). We all put on jerseys and huddled in a circle to know the game plan. We appointed Andy as the captain, since he is one of the few on our team who actually plays soccer. Most of the rest of us were clueless. The conversation in the huddle went something like this:

Katie: So, a soccer ball is that round thing?

McKay: Where can I stand where I don’t have to do anything?

Like 10 girls: Can I be on defense?

So this was looking like it was going to be pretty good. After the huddle we headed out to the field to our appointed spots and started just kicking the ball around before the game. At one point I looked over at Jen standing next to me. The ball was coming towards her, and suddenly she was shaking her hands and screaming, “Oh my gosh, the ball is coming, the ball is coming!” I bent over double I was laughing so hard. The whole sight was absolutely hysterical. Once the game started, I think it only got worse. Although this one time I kicked the ball and it was even in the right direction, so that was a plus. :) We were playing so terribly that even the coach from the African’s team threw on a jersey and joined us. We still lost. 1-0.